Stephanie

“People can be cruel. People can hate what they don't understand."
"But, Dad, they don't want to understand."
"Maybe they don't. But we have to find a way to discipline our hearts so that their cruelty doesn't turn us into hurt animals. We're better than that. Haven't you ever heard the word civilized?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

“So what if sometimes Sam was an emotional exhibitionist, going up and down all the time? She could be a storm. But she could be a soft candle lighting up a dark room. So what if she made me a little crazy? All of it—​all her emotional stuff, her ever-changing moods and tones of voice—​it made her seem so incredibly alive.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

“You saw me. You've always seen me. And I think that's all that anyone wants. That's why Fito loves coming over here. He's been invisible all his life. And all of a sudden he's visible. Seeing someone. That's love.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

“From this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha